Bowie leaders remember John McNamara for his professionalism, sensitivity

Gapital Gazette / TNS

Capital Gazette reporter and editor John McNamara is remember for his dedication and professionalism.

Capital Gazette reporter and editor John McNamara is remember for his dedication and professionalism. (Gapital Gazette / TNS)

Erin Cox, Jack Chavez

John McNamara never aspired to cover Bowie and would openly grouse about setting aside his love of sports reporting to do it.

But he nonetheless became part of the fabric of the community, charming sources with his encyclopedic knowledge of sports, his professionalism and his dedication to write about everything in the city.

When a gunman killed him and four other colleagues last week at The Capital-Gazette, the city lowered its flag to half staff to honor him. A few days later, the city held a moment of silence for McNamara. Prominent community leaders grieved to lose a veteran reporter who managed to write, edit and produce The Bowie Blade-News, almost single-handedly.

“This was the consummate professional guy,” Bowie Mayor G. Frederick Robinson said. “He did a good job under really challenging conditions. Sometimes he was by himself, covering a city of this size and all the things that go on.”

McNamara wrote with an insight and authority that rivaled people who lived in the city their entire lives. He chronicled graduations and shootings, obituaries and the new ice rink, spats over development, City Council meetings elections and the return of the Fourth of July celebration after a 4-year hiatus.

“John cultivated relationships with all these people,” said Mike Rauck, who runs the “Bowie Living” blog. “He didn’t come in with any pretenses, he just came in and he did what he had to do here.”

McNamara frequently sought out Rauck for community insight, dating back to when he first took over the Blade-News in 2015. McNamara’s ability to endear himself to sources through common interests was key establishing his feel for the community, Rauck said.

“It was an incredible one-man shop,” said Scott Peterson, spokesman for Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker. “He covered everything, but he was also easy-going.”

City Councilwoman Courtney Glass said when she was newly elected, McNamara patiently gave her media training to help her get comfortable going on the record. Even when McNamara wrote about sensitive and uncomfortable topics - when Glass was arrested for driving under the influence or was undergoing breast cancer treatment - he treated her with compassion and kindness, Glass said.

“In this day and age, we hear this rhetoric that ‘the press are out to get you, and paint you in a bad light,’ but John was the opposite,” she said.

McNamara religiously attended all the city council meetings, staying until the very end and waiting at times until after midnight to make sure he could talk to a source, Glass said.

“He could be anywhere, doing anything else, and he would be here in the City Council while we’re arguing over feral cats,” she said. “He was a pillar in the community, even if people didn’t realize it.”

Former city manager David Deutsch said McNamara treated the job and the city with respect from the moment he began covering the city.

“What impressed me initially is that John was so eager to learn about city government, city operations,” Deutsch said. “He obviously picked up on it pretty quickly, because he did a pretty good job at covering a range of subjects, even though we knew his first love was sports journalism.”

McNamara’s love for local sports was second to none. As dedicated as he was to covering Bowie, his heart was in sports, especially at his alma mater, the University of Maryland.

City of Bowie Communications Manager Una Cooper said she and McNamara quickly bonded over a mutual love for Maryland Terrapins basketball. In 2002, before she met McNamara, Cooper bought two copies “Cole Classics!: Maryland Basketball’s Leading Men and Moments,” which McNamara co-authored with David Elfin.

“He was like, ‘My god, I didn’t think anybody bought that!’” Cooper recalled. “I brought it into the office recently because I wanted him to autograph it. I just never got around to it.”

McNamara was adept at finding ways to weave sports into his discussions with sources. Even people who work in sports marveled at the breadth of his athletic knowledge, and how he used it to do his job better.

“John was more than just a reporter,” said Bowie Baysox manager Gary Kendall, who knew McNamara for eight years. Kendall said McNamara would ease him into talking about tough losses by shooting the breeze about history of sports in Maryland.

“He had so much knowledge on so many things,” Kendall said. “Certainly, he would not evade important questions, but he had a special way of doing it.”

His commitment to keeping a community informed about itself — a community that was never his literal home — was obvious, even through his love of sports.

“I always felt that it was a total, genuine interest that he wanted to (inform) the people of Bowie,” Baysox General Manager Brian Shallcross said. “Everybody that kissed his (expletive) in the political season, he saw right through them. He was a man who didn’t really want to get involved in that. But he did his job and did it very professionally.”

A memorial will be held for McNamara from 10 a.m. to noon July 10 at the University of Maryland College Park Chapel.

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